This is it, our last full day in the US for the next six months. We are heading to the airport first thing tomorrow morning in our rental car and will be flying out towards Norway tomorrow night out of New York City.
I was the first one up this morning, followed by Luciana and Dominica. Dominica’s first adventure of the day was over-stuffing her suitcase until it blew out. So we have to locate more luggage today in order to be able to travel. Always some new problem for the globe trotting family.
Dad was not feeling great today, so just the Millers went to Geneseo to get lunch at the Omega Grill. After lunch we went shopping at Walmart and picked up a new suitcase, the silver iFly, to replace the one that Dominica killed this morning. The new one is a few inches larger so we will have a little additional packing space (but no extra weight) for this trip.
We dropped the kids off at the house; dad was feeling a bit better. And we went up to the city to pick up our rental car from Enterprise at the Rochester Airport. It was about five when we left the house, our reservation was to pick up the car at six.
We got the car, it ended up being a Dodge Charger which is functional but a really crappy car. It has zero power, not the best visibility, looks ridiculous, drives mediocre, has poor controls and is one of the silliest interiors ever and has rather poor interior space leaving us struggling to be able to get the luggage into a car significantly larger than cars like the Ford Focus that fit the luggage easily. A very impractical car, for sure. But it was cheap.
Once we had the car we decided to have a date since this was our last time having a babysitter for maybe six months! We went to Red Robin as I have never been there before. Dominica has told me how good it was so I figured that I would try it out. We got there and there was quite a line. We got seated and then waited forever for what turned out to basically be mediocre fast food. It was fine, but the veggie burger was just a BOCA burger that we could make at home for about one dollar and ten minutes. Not ten dollars and ninety minutes. And the restaurant makes a big deal about “bottomless” French fries which just means that they are not very good and brought in ridiculously tiny quantities and no one ever comes to check on you again so after you’ve sat there for an hour kind of hungry and wondering if there is another restaurant that might actually care to feed you, you give up and go home and they act like they would have brought you more fries had you waited a few more hours. Overall the food was meh and the service was pathetic. I’ll never eat there again. I’d rather get “plenty” of French fries up front rather than wait forever to not get “bottomless” ones. Clearly just a scam, which is what I suspected with anything bottomless. Basically, it was a bad version of McDonald’s. Cost more, takes way longer, food isn’t as good. If you are in Rochester and want a burger, go to Wahl’s. Skip Red Robin.
From our rather unimpressive final dinner in the US (just a strong reminder of how much better things will be shortly) we went back to the house. Dad said that the girls were really good all evening, even Luciana.
Packing stuff and off to bed tonight. We leave for New York City in the morning!